This is great stuff. Maybe the best article I've ever read in the NYT. Some killer snark –>
http://t.co/aKa1JcnhPa pic.twitter.com/9q7N6EKOLW
— Billmon (@billmon1) April 5, 2015
Just as Netenyahu cares less about Israel’s security than he does about his own political future, so do the Republicans care less about America’s security than they do about getting paid in advance. Let’s be sure they own it:
As the proposed agreement over Iran’s nuclear program is debated in coming weeks, President Obama will make his case to a Congress controlled by Republicans who are more fervently pro-Israel than ever, partly a result of ideology, but also a product of a surge in donations and campaign spending on their behalf by a small group of wealthy donors.
One of the surprisingly high-profile critics is Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who burst to prominence with a letter signed by 46 Republican colleagues to leaders of Iran warning against a deal. Mr. Cotton, echoing criticism by Israeli leaders, swiftly denounced the framework reached on Thursday as “a list of dangerous U.S. concessions that will put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons” — words, his colleagues say, that expressed his deep concern about Iran’s threat to Israel’s security.
But it is also true that Mr. Cotton and other Republicans benefited from millions in campaign spending in 2014 by several pro-Israel Republican billionaires and other influential American donors who helped them topple Democratic opponents.
Republicans currently in the Senate raised more money during the 2014 election cycle in direct, federally regulated campaign contributions from individuals and political action committees deemed pro-Israel than their Democratic counterparts, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and analyzed for The New York Times by a second nonprofit, MapLight. The Republican advantage was the first in more than a decade…
The Emergency Committee for Israel, led by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, spent $960,000 to support Mr. Cotton. In that same race, Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire from New York and a leading donor to pro-Israel causes, contributed $250,000 to Arkansas Horizon, another independent expenditure group supporting Mr. Cotton. Seth Klarman, a Boston-based pro-Israel billionaire, contributed $100,000.
The political action committee run by John Bolton, the United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush and an outspoken supporter of Israel, spent at least $825,000 to support Mr. Cotton. That PAC is in part financed by other major pro-Israel donors, including Irving and Cherna Moskowitz of Miami, who contributed 99 percent of their $1.1 million in 2012 races to Republican candidates and causes…
“I know there has been all this fervent speculation that Tom Cotton and Bill Kristol and Sheldon Adelson were at some private room at the Venetian cooking this up,” said Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, referring to Mr. Adelson’s casino in Las Vegas, where many prominent Republicans and Jewish leaders will gather this month. “But Tom is a smart guy and has a long record of thinking about the Middle East, and he is entrepreneurial. Tom wrote this letter.”…
My emphases, of course. The Saudi princes are shaking their heads: ‘Who knew you could buy these Senators so cheaply?’
When a single chart explains pretty much everything you need to know about an issue –>
http://t.co/aKa1JcnhPa pic.twitter.com/cBozGB4YUX
— Billmon (@billmon1) April 5, 2015
aimai
A couple of million? Is that all? He could have raised nearly that much simply by refusing to serve pizza to gay couples. What a sucker.
White Trash Liberal
And Israel is by far our #1 recipient of military aid, which is nothing but a sop to US defense contractors. Tom Cotton receives but a pittance in order to contrive whatever means necessary to keep the money artery pumping fresh green blood.
Citizens United is ramping this process up by an order of magnitude. The legal equation of money as speech is the most pernicious idea since people equated property.
raven
You should make sure people are sitting down before they read this.
Villago Delenda Est
Sheldon Adleson, all by himself, seems to be intent on making the Reinhard Heydrich take on Judaism valid.
rikyrah
Yes… That genius Cotton, who was aghast that Iran had overrun Tehran.
Patricia Kayden
Why am I not surprised that $$$ is pushing the Republicans into further insanity? With all the $$$ in American politics, it’s really hard to call it a democratic system. How can regular folks influence politicians the way that billionaires do? It’s an extremely unfair system.
Frankensteinbeck
It doesn’t cost that much to buy someone who wants to be bought. It’s much smarter to give money to help out someone who you know wants to vote for your cause than to try and get quid pro quo from an enemy or pure mercenary. Similarly, true believers have a long history of finding ways to skim a fat living off the causes they do believe in.
Mike J
@Villago Delenda Est: You seem dangerously close to, “Hitler had the right idea.”
poco
That NYT piece is a great article, and the chart clarifies what so many of us have suspected. Now if only someone would do a serious journalistic piece on Sheldon Adelson’s contribution.
Or as another twitter user had it: The Senate has always been a whorehouse, the Citizen United decision just raised the roof on political contributions.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J: This is where Sheldon Adleson is taking the country. He’s putting Israel ahead of the US. He’s giving antisemites all the ammo they need.
Linda Featheringill
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ouch.
Linda Featheringill
@Mike J:
Nah. He’s saying that Adelson is personifying the idea of “Jews run the world.”
I think.
Mike in NC
Shelly Adelson wants his war, dammit, even if it costs him his last buck! He’ll get it if JEB slithers into the Oval Office.
Linda Featheringill
On the other hand, Heydrich did run the whole Einsatzgruppen program. So maybe I’m wrong.
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m running in circles here. Can you clarify what you meant?
Trentrunner
With every passing year and every Israeli extremist act, more and more Americans are willing to tell Israel to just go fuck itself. I’m becoming one of them.
You’re now officially exploiting Holocaust guilt, and you’re fucking with the rest of world’s peace.
Go home, Israel. You’re drunk.
RaflW
@Mike in NC:
He’s 81 years old and Forbes estimates he’s worth just shy of $27 Billion. Even if he is from a long line of long-lived people, he could give away $100 million to Republicans every year, and his money would last 270 years. If he bumped up his actuarial senses to 27 years, the math is even easier: $1 billion per year to the GOP is 27 years before he’d be broke. 108 years old…
Except of course the Venetian is making him piles of new cash every day.
Suzanne
@Trentrunner: Truth. I have always felt like the establishment of Israel was drenched in unfairness—Europe giving away a British colony because of valid Holocaust guilt is really giving away what was never rightfully theirs. And their lack of willingness to honor the essential humanity and equality of their Arab citizens proves that they are just as subject to the same human frailty—not any special evil—that caused the Holocaust. Seventy years after the war, and we’re not any better for it. Fuck this shit. I am not interested.
Bill Arnold
@Villago Delenda Est:
He thinks he is doing that, but he is mistaken. (IMO)
poco
@Trentrunner: Yes, this.
Tree With Water
@Patricia Kayden: And yet, it happens. In 2004, Karl Rove had “anti-gay” referendums placed as on the ballots of strategic states and tied them into the Bush-Cheney national campaign, so confident was the republican party that it was a winning strategy. Shot callers in the the democratic party, in turn, hemmed and hawed and tried to change the subject, and were furious when San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom loudly endorsed gay marriage at the 2004 democratic national convention. It wasn’t money that turned the tide either, or at least it wasn’t the major reason. And believe me, there’s an political undercurrent now occurring in this country whose waters are rising. Exactly what stands to be overwhelmed by those waters is anyone’s guess. Personally, I’m feeling pretty good about what it portends. Then again, talk about famous last words. In 1939, you can bet some peace loving German said the same thing about his country sometime during that summer.
Anne Laurie
@Trentrunner:
“Israel” is only as much to blame for Netenyahu as “America” is for Tom Cotton — or Dick Cheney.
National governments fall into bad hands, sometimes. It’s tragically easy to confuse an entire nation with the monsters in charge of it, especially when it’s a small nation populated by a tribe with a long history of being scapegoated.
If you prefer, think about the unfairness of dismissing LGBT Indianans or Alabama people of color under the rubric “We should just abandon the whole state, anybody with good sense would’ve moved away by now.” Easy, but stupid & thoughtless.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
And what happens to that 27 billion when he passes away? I’d lay a bet that not one penny will go to helping mankind.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
Even more so as Israel is a parliamentary system. At least here (without gerrymandering that is) you have to get more than half the votes. OK not always in a presidential election. OK cancel everything I just said.
Elmo
@Villago Delenda Est:
Really not cool. Really. Fuck, I am to the point where I am starting to hate Israel, but that comment made me really sick.
Jews are not Israel and Israel is not the Jews.
RaflW
@Ruckus: I wouldn’t be surprised if Adelson’s second agenda item after Israel is the complete abolishment of the inheritance tax. Though he probably has a fleet of lawyers who’ve helped structure a tax-free transfer of that wealth somewhere, absolutely f_ng tax free.
Pogonip
Not on this topic but important because cute: retrieverman.net has a bathtub full of ducklings! Too cute!
Aimai
@Elmo: thank you.
JPL
@Anne Laurie: Thanks for that.
Karen in GA
@Villago Delenda Est: No.
Bill Arnold
@RaflW:
Betcha he has no interest in the abolishment of the sometimes 100% middle-class inheritance tax, AKA long-term care.
Tim F.
Saudis own the Republican old guard, in particular the whole Bush clan.
Violet
@Anne Laurie:
Ha. People say this about Texas all the time and everyone just piles on. Pretty much the same for “the South.” “Let them secede–why should we care?”
Mike J
@Tim F.: I don’t think they own them, but their interests are aligned. Chaos in world oil markets means higher profits for everybody. Everybody that sells oil, anyway.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill: That is what I meant. The entire “Jews run the world” trope, which is bullshit, but it sure looks like Sheldon Adleson runs the GOP.
Tree With Water
@Elmo: I look at Israel as I do every other nation state on the planet. Exactly the same (including Ireland, where the spirits of me blessed ancestors call me ever home with their lilting pipes toy-toy-toy..). So do an increasing number of Americans, I believe. I further think that fact drives a lot of Israelis, and a certain small percentage of their American supporters, absolutely insane. Consequently, as witnessed by the Israeli state’s unholy alliance with an equally perverted republican party, criticism however benign is no longer tolerated as acceptable, and all critics are perceived as enemies of the state. And that attitude isn’t going to cut it with the American people in the long run.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elmo: Jews are not Israel and Israel is not the Jews. That’s the rational way to look at it. However, there are those in Israel itself who make every effort to make it so that unless you support them without reservation, you’re an antisemite.
Our native looneys don’t need no rationality. Adleson is playing into the hands of those who seek to persuade the uninformed. Which is most of the country.
jl
Need some encouragement for the Democrats who are tempted to try to sabotage the Iran negotiations.
Make s a list and check it twice. Contact them and tell them you will be financing primaries if they try to wreck the negotiations.
I can imagine scenarios where the current deal would become counterproductive.
For example, if Saudi Arabia and some other Sunni countries decided they wanted to weaponizable nuclear program because they were afraid of Iranian nukes, that would be a serious problem. Iran would probably want to get out of the agreement, or cheat on it.
But until hard evidence that kind of thing is happening, no way it is wise to sabotage the talks.
So far, all I have heard is cheap demagoguery, jingo warmongering, partisan BS, and probably some racism (in that, since high stakes foreign policy negotiations are so sophisticated and takes courage and brains, this all happened on an inadequate blah man Obama day, rather than an evil shapes shifting satanic super-genius Obama day).
Need to keep tabs on quisling Democrats in Congress and contact them they are going down on a little list for next election.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: In that post on the goofy white genocide video, the links lead to the racist nutjob wingnut manifesto behind it, had ‘The Jews’ (they are always one unified group) written down as the global masterminds of it all.
Maybe the high class GOP RWNJ, Xtianist Endtimer, necoon, and teabagger grifters know its all BS. But some loser white bigot doesn’t and after reading that garbage is as likely to go after local Jews as he is to go after Muslins, or blacks or Hispanics, or any other evil minority that is genociding him with, I dunno, suddenly appearing on TV too much for his taste, or losing him is job somehow.
Edit: so your mode of expression may offend some, but there it is true that even if all their paranoid fever dreams and hate fantasies make no sense, and have no internal consistency at all, all sorts of people are on a hate list, and they will stay there forever, for the white racists.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mike J: I’m with Tim F; I think the Republican old guard has been bought and paid for by he house of Saud. The Bush family, going back to Prescott and certainly not stopping at our father who art in Houston, has a long history of courting the wealthy powerful, who become quite good friends. Including, of course, the wealthy bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. How much the wealthy and powerful trade on that relationship is a matter of opinion, of course.
Tree With Water
@jl: What I’m keeping an eye on is how the republican party will juggle business interests with their fire breathers who literally believe the Israeli state to be a holy vessel, to which all their judgements conform. As Obama made crystal clear the other day, however, were we to continue in efforts to sanction Iran, the USA could well be on its own. The international community is not bound by our dictates. I can’t see the world swooping in to make money with American business sidelined by U.S. law, but then again, times have changed. The republican party has gone insane, and no one (including itself) has a clear notion as to what depraved depths it can sink. I always assume the worst about it, but even I have no idea the scale of potential catastrophe that benighted party is capable of unleashing upon the world.
Patrick
@Ruckus:
In order to be PM, Nethanyahu’s coalition had to get more than half the votes. Some parties in his coalition are more right-wing than Nethanyahu.
Zinsky
Two questions for Senator Tom (“I have a hard-on to bomb Tehran”) Cotton:
1) Can we raise your taxes to pay for any invasion or occupation of Iran?
2) Will you sign a pledge to send your children to die in any future Middle Eastern conflict you or the Republican Party starts?
A “no” to either question immediately disqualifies this pencil-necked handjob from any future discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East!
Ruckus
@Patrick:
Hence the last line of my comment.
Building on the punchline is standard in comedy. Even though this is not a funny subject.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Elmo: You’re just noticing now that VDE is fond of exactly the sort of rhetoric we rightly condemn when it comes from conservatives? The dude’s worse than offensive; he’s boring since he is a complete one trick pony.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Ruckus: Netanyahu’s coalition got more than half the votes in the entire country. Cotton got more than half the votes in one Congressional district. It’s just as proper to blame the inhabitants of Israel for electing the former as it is to blame the inhabitants of the district for electing the latter. That’s the thing about democracy: it makes the people responsible for the government they put in place. So I can simultaneously acknowledge and support those who oppose Netanyahu and blame the polity for its choices.
jl
@Tree With Water:
The bigshots revolving around the Bush axis sure do not give a damn how many people get hurt, and particularly do not care much about Israel, if it doesn’t hurt them electorally.
We have seen in North Korea and previously in Iran what happens when the US goes all self righteously alone and lets agreements, attempts to reach agreements, and multilateral efforts fall apart: places like North Korea and Iran do as they damn please.
I have been steaming through the ears over supposed arms control experts (who sound more like the standard issue GOP political hack) on our worthless talking about how this type agreement hasn’t worked in the past with North Korea and Iran and using that to side with skeptics of the Iran agreement. And who are the skeptics of this agreement? Mainly Jackass GOPers whose policies were even worse failures. I called up a station and complained, not sure it will do any good.
Cervantes
@rikyrah:
Once again, that is not what he said.
Mike J
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Thank you. I’m no fan of eliminationist rhetoric.
Chris T.
@Patricia Kayden: One dollar, one vote! It’s perfectly
democraticplutocratic!Villago Delenda Est
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I welcome you to go stand in a fire. And if you think I’m a one trick pony, well, that’s your opinion. You are certainly entitled to it. But the facts are, the way Israel is behaving right now is a disgrace, and the way Israel’s supporters are behaving is a disgrace, and disrespects those who survived the Holocaust.
boatboy_srq
Notice the framing: “pro-Israel donors.” I see plenty of organizations here that are pro-Israel without being Jewish or explicitly pro-Jewish. There’s a real difference between people like Adelson, who are pushing the Greater Judea concept, and the FundiEvangelicals who are funding a Jewish Israel as part of their End Times prerequisites.